facial recognition

The US Secret Service (USSS) plans to test facial recognition technology at the White House, the agency revealed in a newly published document. The USSS released a statement detailing its plan, which includes testing the technology on employees as a stepping stone toward potential deployment as a new security feature. The test has raised concerns among some biometric security critics.

The TSA wants to widely expand the use of facial recognition technology in US airports, revealing the plan in a newly published roadmap. According to the agency, this plan will "modernize" passenger screening in airports in the relatively near future, using biometric data to identify travelers while speeding up the entire screening process.

Microsoft is calling for government regulation of facial recognition, citing both the benefits and risks associated with the technology. "Facial recognition technology raises issues that go to the heart of fundamental human rights protections like privacy and freedom of expression," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a long essay today. For all the good it offers, the same technology can be used to oppress a population.

In central China police officers protecting the public have a new tool to catch criminals. Some officers are now wearing special facial recognition glasses with software that can search for criminals as people walk by. The glasses are being used at a railway station during the travel rush for the Lunar New Year holiday.

Chinese police are using a Google Glass-like wearable computer to spot criminals, with the notoriously intrusive authorities outfitting security teams with facial recognition tech. The headsets are being deployed among railway police in Zhengzhou, capital of China's Henan province. Each has a crowd-facing camera, and is linked with a police database.

Facebook is about to launch a hardware product called Portal, according to a new report, to take on Amazon and its Echo devices. Portal, at least unofficially, is a video chat device for homes that makes video chatting a simple task. Facebook's hardware won't be announced at CES 2018, the sources say, instead being slated for an early May unveiling with a launch date later on this year.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will heavily rely on facial recognition technology for security purposes, according to sources who say the tech will ultimately scan up to 400,000 faces during the event. The technology will be primarily used for getting athletes and journalists to their destinations quickly, the sources claim, with the overall system making it more difficult for stolen or forged credentials to be used for access.

The OnePlus 5T may be top of the popular Android smartphone-maker's tree right now, but that doesn't mean owners of the OnePlus 5 should forget about feature updates. The handset is less than a year old, and clearly has some new tricks up its sleeve. Most notable is borrowing a security feature that has until now been limited to the OnePlus 5T: face unlock.

CaliBurger, a burger joint in California, is testing facial recognition technology as a way for customers to pull up favorite orders and accounts. The tech is only a pilot at this time, one being referred to as a "face-based loyalty program." The facial recognition is part of self-ordering kiosks with artificial intelligence running NEC's NeoFace software. You'll need to visit the company's Pasadena, California location to try it out, though.

Facebook will use facial recognition to spot you in photos you haven't already been tagged in, as the social network attempts to fend off concerns about user privacy being overlooked. However, to get in ahead of complaints about the new feature, there's also a way to turn it all off.

Android over-the-shoulder peeking alert technology is just about to be presented by Google for Pixel devices. The feature wont be implemented on Google Pixel Android smartphones for some unknown period of time - but it would seem that the tech is already here, and it already works pretty gosh-darned well. This feature uses the smartphone's front-facing camera to detect faces other than the phone owner, then alerting the phone owner that someone is looking over their shoulder.

The OnePlus 5T was announced earlier today, and just like another certain flagship device, it'll have users unlocking their phones with facial recognition. This seems to be the direction the industry is headed, and so far, the iPhone X gives us our best example of the technology through Face ID. Though the OnePlus 5T also uses facial recognition as a marquee feature, it seems that its creators know that it won't be as accurate as it needs to be before it's the only option for verification.